It has been questioned many times why I own so many books. “Do you read all of them?” “If you don’t read them, what’s the point?” “German? You don’t speak German!” Perhaps to some people, it doesn’t make sense to purchase a book written in a language you don’t speak, but I don’t always buy books to read them. Perhaps to some at the $1 sidewalk sales, it looks like I’m picking up every book I see, but I do have some criteria.
When I choose a book, I look for wear on the cover. I want a book that’s seen some action. I want a book that’s seen time pass. Older books have pages that are a bit thicker, covers that are a bit faded and binding that’s a bit loose. It’s an amazing thing to know that when the first owners wrote their names into some of these books, women did not yet have the right to vote. These books were carried through the Great Depression and, possibly, passed down for a generation or two. Perhaps they were sold upon somebody’s death. I like to think about everything a book could have been through before it ended up in my hands.
I have some books from the early to mid-nineteenth century. Those books witnessed a nation at war with itself. They survived the destruction of the war, carried onward by their owners. I like to imagine where these books once sat. Perhaps on a shelf in a great house, overlooking ladies chatting in a parlor.
I have some books written in German, Irish and Spanish. How did they end up here? Surely not all of them were printed in the United States. Were they brought by immigrants over the Atlantic? Others are clearly instructional books, with their scribbled pencil notes in the margins. I wonder if the scribbler got very far with this language, or if he or she was just forced to take a class on it in school.
Well, since I don’t read these books, then what do I do with them? Mostly, I arrange them nicely on my bookshelf and let the wisdom of their many years watch over me as well. Then, when I’m sad or if it’s raining, I flip through and listen to the whisper of past readers between the pages.
My love of antiquarian books has spanned several years, and has been supported all this time by one of my favorite local businesses: Underground Books in Carrollton, especially with their $1 Sidewalk Sale Saturdays! Although I may not have read every single one of the one-hundred-plus antiquarian books that sit on my shelf, one does not have to read a book in order to understand its story; because every book has two stories and only one of them is written on the pages.
